Slavic Native Faith in Russia

Celebration of Kupala Night.

The scholar Kaarina Aitamurto has observed that a "substantial number" of Russian Rodnovers, and in particular the earliest adherents, belonged to the "technical intelligentsia".[1] Similarly, the scholar Victor Shnirelman noted that the founders of Russian Rodnovery were "well-educated urbanized intellectuals" who had become frustrated with "cosmopolitan urban culture".[2] Physicists were particularly well represented; in this Aitamurto drew comparisons to the high number of computer professionals who were present in the Pagan communities of Western countries.[1] The movement also involved a significant number of people who had a background in the Soviet or Russian Army,[3] or in policing and security.[4] A questionnaire distributed at the Kupala festival in Maloyaroslavets suggested that Native Faith practitioners typically had above-average levels of education, with a substantial portion working as business owners or managers.[5] A high proportion were also involved in specialist professions such as engineering, the academia, or information technology, and the majority lived in cities.[6] The "vast majority" of Russian Rodnovers were young and there were a greater proportion of men than women.[1]

Shnirelman informs that Rodnovery in Russia is embraced by many politically engaged philosophers, both of the right- and the left-wing. The former group is represented by Vladimir Andeyev, Anatoly Ivanov, Pavel Tulaev (members of the Moscow Slavic Community and founders of the New Right journal Ateney), Aleksei Trekhlebov from Krasnodar, Valery Demin from Omsk, and the Saint Petersburg journalists Oleg Gusev and Roman Perin, among others.[7] Ivakhiv reports that they have a "surprisingly extensive" influence.[8] The well-known Rodnover leader Velimir (Nikolai Speransky), who is the founder of the politically neutral federation Circle of Pagan Tradition, classifies Valery Yemelyanov, volkhv Dobroslav (Aleksei Dobrovolsky), Vladimir Istarkhov and Igor Sinyavin as representatives of right-wing Rodnovery; according to him, the Union of Slavic Rodnover Communities founded by Vadim Kazakov and the "Church of Nav" (Це́рковь На́ви, Tsérkov' Návi) generally lean towards the right-wing. The left-wing of the spectrum would be represented, instead, by Anton Platov, Aleksandr Asov and Aleksandr Khinevich (founder of Ynglism), though they keep most of their religious activities outside of politics.[9]

Since the 1990s, Traditionalist School thinkers—chiefly René Guénon and the Italian Pagan philosopher Julius Evola—have been translated and introduced in the very mainstream of Russian thought by the philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who has an influential position in contemporary Russian academic and political life.[10] According to the scholar Robert A. Saunders, some strains of Rodnovery have become close supporters and components of Eurasianism (whose most prominent contemporary proponent is Dugin), the currently dominant ideology of the Russian central government.[11]

A number of youth subcultures have been identified as introducing people to Rodnovery, among them heavy metal, historical re-enactment, and the admirers of J. R. R. Tolkien.[12] Rodnovery is also spread through a variety of newspapers and journals.[7] Also popular with Russian Rodnovers has been the martial arts movement known as Slavyano-goritskaya bor'ba.[13] A number of popular celebrities, including singer Maria Arkhipova and professional boxer Aleksandr Povetkin,[14] have publicly embraced Rodnovery.

A kolo, ritual circle of Russian Rodnovers.

Writing in 2000, Shnirelman noted that Rodnovery was growing rapidly within the Russian Federation.[15] In 2016, Aitamurto noted that there was no reliable information on the number of Rodnovers in Russia, but that it was plausible that there were several tens of thousands of practitioners active in the country.[16] This was partly because there were several Rodnover groups active on the social network VK which had over 10,000 members.[16] As of 2003, the Russian Ministry of Justice had registered forty Rodnover organisations, while there were "probably several hundred of them in existence".[17]

The historian Marlène Laruelle similarly noted that Rodnovery in Russia has spread mostly among the young people and the cultivated middle classes, that portion of Russian society interested in the post-Soviet revival of faith but turned off by Orthodox Christianity, "which is very institutionalized" and "out of tune with the modern world", and "is not appealing [to these people] because it expects its faithful to comply with normative beliefs without room for interpretation". Rodnovery is attractive because of its "paradoxical conjunction" of tradition and modernity, recovery of the past through innovative syntheses, and its values calling for a rediscovery of the true relationship between mankind, nature and the ancestors.[18] Rodnovery has also contributed to the diffusion of "historical themes"—particularly regarding an ancient Aryan race—to the general population, including many who were Orthodox or non-religious.[19] Rodnovery has been spreading rapidly in the North Caucasus region of Russia, especially among communities of Cossacks and in the Stavropol region, where in some areas it already has a dominant position. It has been reported that even former priests of the Russian Orthodox Church have joined their ranks.[20]

A 2012 nationwide survey of religion in Russia found that there were 1,700,000 practitioners of "traditional religions of gods and ancestors" in the federation as of that year.[21] A polemical piece entitled Adversus paganos, published in 2015 by the official journal of the Ascension Cathedral of Astrakhan, cited sociological data saying that the Native Faiths was already formally embraced by "more than 2 million Russians", while the number of people affected by Rodnover ideas was several times larger. This is based on data provided in 2012 by Igor Zadorin, the director of the research institute "Tsirkon", who said that in Russia the proportions of atheists, Orthodox Christians and "pagans" were of comparable sizes and their populations overlap: Orthodox Christians were 30% of the total population; people who had some sort of "pagan", non-Christian spirituality, were 40% of the population, while the remaining population was composed of a 20% who were atheists, and a 10% who were believers of other religions (4–7% ethnic minorities professing Islam).[22]

A couple and their house at the Korenskye kinship estate, an Anastasian settlement in the Shebekinsky District of Belgorod Oblast.

The Ringing Cedars (Звенящие Кедры) or Anastasianism is a spiritual movement that overlaps with Rodnovery, but is not thoroughly part of it. Many Anastasians are Rodnovers, while others are not. The Ringing Cedars' movement arises from the writings of Vladimir Megre (Puzakov), codified in a series of ten books entitled The Ringing Cedars of Russia, whose teachings are attributed to a beautiful Siberian woman known as Anastasia, often considered a deity or the incarnation of a deity, whom Megre would have met during one of his trade expeditions.[23] These books teach what the scholar Rasa Pranskevičiūtė has defined as a "cosmological pantheism",[24] in which nature is the manifested "thought of God" and human intelligence has the power to commune with him and to actively participate to the creation of the world.[25]

Anastasians have established rural villages all over Russia, "kinship homesteads" (родовое поместье, rodovoye pomest'ye), where they conduct a harmonious life in at least a hectare of land. The name "Ringing Cedars" derives from the beliefs held by Anastasians about the spiritual qualities of the Siberian cedar. In his writings, Megre identifies the ideal society which the Ringing Cedars' movement aims at establishing as "Vedic", and many of his teachings are identical to those of other movements of Rodnovery.[26]

Zoroastrianism emerged as a public entity in Russia in the 1990s, created by Russians themselves despite the normally endogamic essence of the traditional Zoroastrian communities existing in Iran and India. The first Zoroastrian organisation, the "Avestan School of Astrology" (shortened "Asha", which, in the oldest texts known as Arta, is the Persian word defining the agency of cosmic harmony), was established by Pavel Globa (1953–) in the early 1990s, and opened dozens of branches in and outside of Russia. Globa had been teaching Avestan astrology since the 1970s, and in the 1990s he had become a nationally acknowledged expert on the subject. Globa presents himself as the heir of a lineage of Zurvanism (the type of Zoroastrianism that regards Zurvan, i.e. "Time" and "Whole", as the supreme God) from north-west Iran, allegedly transmitted through his great grandmother and his maternal grandfather Ivan N. Gantimurov.[27]^:449–450 Some of Globa's pupils were initiated by he himself into a priesthood (khorbad).[27]^:451

In 1994 the "Zoroastrian Community of Saint Petersburg" was established by Globa's followers and officially registered. The organisation publishes the magazine Mitra and the newsletter Tiri. The Zoroastrianism that they propose is a consciously mimetic appropriation of the religion as it is practised among traditional Zoroastrian communities. This recreation involves significant changes; for instance the cords that are worn by initiates around their waist are not white woollen cords as in the original tradition, but are three-coloured cords—yellow, red and blue—symbolising, according to Globa, the three colours of Zurvan.[27]^:452 Since 2001, the priest of Iranian origins Kamran Jamshidi initiated new Avestan astrologers in Minsk, and Russia became a mission field for them. Tensions arose as Jamshidi's initiates challenged the authority of Globa. Under the influence of these new missionaries, another organisation was founded in Moscow in the year 2005, the "Russian Anjoman" (Русский Анджоман; anjoman is a Persian word meaning "assembly"). They use the term of Russian origin "Blagovery" (Благоверие Blagoverie, literally "Good Faith") to define their Zoroastrianism.[27]^:453

Russian Zoroastrian communities, whether belonging to the Peterburger or Muscovite movements, emphasise that Zoroastrianism has Russian origins, and traces of it have been preserved in Slavic folklore. This parallels the discourse of Rodnovery, and one of the early Rodnover ideologues, Anatoly Ivanov, defined his views as "Zoroastrian" and "Avestan". In 1981, Ivanov even published the anti-Christian text entitled Zarathustra Did Not Speak Thus: The Basics of the Aryan Worldview, inspired by Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, wherein Ivanov says that Zoroastrianism should be adopted as a new paradigm for humanity and discusses the eschatology of the Saoshyant.[27]^:454–455 Zoroastrianism has been described by Stausberg and Tessmann as a "permanent discussion topic" within the Rodnover community.[27]^:455 As it is the case for Rodnovers, the site of Arkaim has great importance for Russian Zoroastrians/Blagovers, since it is believed that the "Aryan prophet" Zoroaster lived there.[27]^:453 In 2007, during an interview with Iranian state media, Russian president Vladimir Putin himself declared that Zoroastrianism originated in the southern part of the Ural region of Russia, and it is the base of all major world religious systems.[28]

Many Rodnovers are influenced by Central Asian or Siberian shamanism and its modern organised form, Tengrism, which has become widespread in easternmost regions of Russia. One of the earliest exponents of Rodnovery, Moscow State University-graduated psychologist Grigory Yakutovsky (1955–, known as a shaman by the name Vseslav Svyatozar; his surname reveals a possible Yakut ancestry), asserted that ancient Slavic religion was fundamentally shamanic, and Siberian shamanism plays a central role in his formulations. In Yakutovsky's Rodnovery, Slavic gods are secondary in importance compared to goddesses, and he claims that this was typical of ancient Slavic religion. Yakutovsky's form of Rodnovery has been defined as "tolerant, pluralistic and pacifistic"; his teachings are also representative of the minority of Rodnovers who identify as communists. Yakutovsky is critical of the Soviet type of communism, and rather proposes "social communism" as the ideal form of government for the future. He also espouses a form of elitism, by recognising shamans (poets and mystics) as a minority of people characterised by greater intelligence and power devoted to the realisation of a better future for humanity.[29]

According to the scholar of religion Mircea Eliade, original Proto-Indo-European religion is closer to Central Asian shamanism than to the later Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions, as proven by their shared crucial concepts: the supreme God of Heaven (cf. Indo-European Dyeus, Siberian Tengri, and Mesopotamian Dingir) and the three-layered structure of cosmology (cf. Sanskrit Trailokya).[30]